Breast cancer couldn't erode mom's support for sons in West Point

WEST POINT — Two Augusts ago, Rhonda Lassiter had a conversation with her two sons that the small, tight-knit family is unlikely to ever forget.

Lassiter, a single parent, had shared plenty with Jordan Lassiter, 16, and Jahlil Green, 15, both high school sophomores and key members of West Point's football team, throughout the years. This, though, was different.

A knot under Lassiter's right arm had grown uncomfortable enough to make her, at a friend's insistence, go to the emergency room. A mammogram and a biopsy quickly followed, and two days later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

So Lassiter found herself sitting across from her sons in the living room of their West Point home, drawing upon a counselor's advice.

"She just told me to sit them down and be honest with them," Lassiter said. "So I said, 'I have something to tell y'all. I went to the doctor, and I got tests done. I just found out that I have breast cancer.' Everybody just got quiet for a minute, and then they started asking questions: 'How do you know for sure? Are you going to die?' "

"I just couldn't believe it," said Jordan, a linebacker.

Jahlil, a speedy running back who also plays defensive back, made a request of his mom: "He told me he didn't want it to change me," Rhonda Lassiter said.

Jahlil couldn't have known the lengths his mother would go to in order to honor his request.

Staying strong

Rhonda Lassiter's first chemotherapy treatment fell on a game day in September 2010.

"I got there at 8 a.m. that morning, and it was probably about 3 p.m.," she said "I was looking at the dosage as it came down, and I started to cry, because I just remembered what the last thing (Jahlil) said to me — he didn't want it change me.

"I just laid there crying, because I knew I couldn't come to the game. In my head, I felt like I couldn't, and I was like, 'Already, I'm letting them down.' "

Lassiter wouldn't have it.

"When my chemo nurse came back in, I said, 'We've got to hurry up. You've got to unhook me. I've got a game to go to,' " she said. "I got unhooked at 3:15, came back home, and by 4 p.m., I was on the highway, going to Franklin for a game."

Once there, Lassiter felt something was wrong, especially with Jahlil, who always makes eye contact with his mom in the stands.

"He just wasn't playing like himself," Lassiter said. "I was like, 'They knew I had to go for my first chemo, and so much stuff is probably going their heads.' He wasn't doing too good, so I just called his name to show him where I'm always sitting. We made our regular eye contact, and then he went on and scored two touchdowns."

Lassiter also didn't let one of the four surgeries she ended up having keep her from her accustomed seat, either. She simply couldn't miss her boys in action, especially not on this night at King and Queen, when the team was wearing pink socks in her honor.

"I went straight from the recovery room, got in the car, and went to the game," Lassiter said. "I don't really remember it. I don't think I even remember who won. I just wanted them to see me there."

Arrangements were made for Lassiter to park where she could watch the game without getting out of her car, but that wouldn't do. Her sons had to see her.

"I just didn't want them to be worried on the football field, because anything could happen," Lassiter said. "The last thing I wanted them to worry about was whether I was OK or not."

Andrew Layne, in his first season as West Point's coach, didn't see Lassiter at that game. But he's seen her at every one this season, as Jahlil has rushed for 1,026 yards, caught 20 passes for another 480 and earned first-team all-Tidewater District honors as both an offensive utility player and a defensive back.

The coach also saw Lassiter this summer, at the Pointers' two-a-day practices in the sweltering heat.

"It's remarkable. I know from personal experience what (cancer treatment) does to your body, the fatigue that sets in," said Layne, whose father, Paul, died of colon cancer two years ago. "I know she has to be sick and tired. Waking up every single day and knowing you have to be strong for your teenagers … you're just in awe sometimes.

"You know she probably needs to rest, but she's going to be there, letting her kids know she supports them no matter how sick she is. That's what a lot of people look to for hope."

Struggles

Lassiter couldn't always be Superwoman.

"I was depressed," she said. "I was totally bald. I lost my hair, my eyebrows. I was worried about how (Jordan and Jahlil) would feel about me being around them and their friends with no hair. But they told me I was beautiful with or without it."

Lassiter developed a blood clot around her collarbone that is still being treated, and she also suffers from nerve damage in her legs that left her unable to return to her job as a supervisor at Henrico County Regional Jail East — and made her admit her vulnerability to her sons.

"I know I probably scared them to death one night," she said. "It was midnight, and my legs had this deep bone pain. They had to come add compression to my legs. That was the first time they've seen me in that type of pain, because I was trying to hide it from them. But I just couldn't that night."

Jordan and Jahlil both say they tried not to focus on their mother's illness, but Rhonda Lassiter — who played basketball and taught her boys the ins and outs of football when they were 7 and 8 — could see its effects.

"They kind of felt like they had to babysit me at first," she said. "One of them would be getting ready to leave, and the other one would wait until the other one came back and then leave. I just told them one day, 'Y'all said you didn't want it to change me, so don't let it change you.' "

The boys say that, for the most part, their lives remained the same.

"If she asked me to do something, I'd do it, just because I knew she couldn't," Jahlil said. "I was just there whenever she needed me."

"I was kind of sad at first," Jordan said. "I just tried to keep positive, too, and not really think about it as much."

That's where football came in.

"The football field, for them, is their release," Layne said. "It's where they can get away from having to think about it. My dad died of cancer as an adult, (and) it was extremely difficult for me to take in. I can't imagine having to deal with it as a teenager."

Layne said both boys also have stayed very involved in school activities.

"You can't walk the hallway and not see them there, doing something positive," Layne said. "Jahlil always has a smile on his face, and Jordan does, too."

On the field, Layne said Jordan, who is also a blocking tight end, has improved steadily, while Jahlil has emerged as a team leader for the Pointers, who finished the regular season 4-6 and lost to Sussex Central in a first-round playoff game on Friday.

"He's the guy I look to to make sure everything's under control, that people aren't messing around," Layne said. "As a first-year coach, I don't think I could have done it without him."

With 4.5 speed in the 40-yard dash and a 3.7 GPA, Jahlil is already attracting the attention of colleges.

"Our football team right now is really trying to learn about being together, and Jahlil and Jordan treat football as their second family," Layne said. "They've got stuff that's life or death that they're dealing with every single day, and they show up. They don't miss practice.

"I think a lot of other kids look at that and say, 'Why am I going to miss? Because I'm tired? Nah, I'm going to show up, too.' "

Recovery

Lassiter, who had the cancerous margins around her breast successfully removed to avoid a mastectomy, completed chemotherapy this past February, and six weeks of radiation ended in April.

Though Lassiter, now 39, deals with daily pain and numbness in her right arm from the removal of her lymph nodes, she is cancer-free.

"It's always there, but then I just say it's better, because I could have been dead," she said. "That's the way I look at it. If I've got to go through a little pain, I'd rather do that."

Lassiter feels her ordeal brought her already close sons — whose claim that they never fight is verified by their mother — even closer together. But she wasn't always so philosophically upbeat.

"I always felt like, whenever something bad happens, you've got to find the good in it. At the time, I really didn't see any good," she said. "I went through my phases of, 'Why did it have to be me?' But it just brought us together as a family.

"Instead of them always feeling like they needed me, I had to show them that I needed them just the same."

Lassiter, relying on friends to help with the bills and in the process of applying for disability, is grateful for where she is now, but looks forward to the day when she can put her struggle firmly behind her.

"I just want my life back," she said. "I want to get up and go to work every day, like I did. If not, then I tend to think about it. There's still some deep feelings behind it, when I sit here and I think about it."

Lassiter, wearing a T-shirt with a pink ribbon and the words "Fight Like a Girl" emblazoned below pink boxing gloves, fights those feelings just like she fought to do what Jahlil asked of her two Augusts ago.

"I feel like God used me to help somebody," she said. "There's somebody that wakes up every day that's getting ready to go through the same thing that we've got to go through."

What those people can learn from Rhonda Lassiter and her sons is simple: Seek strength from each other.

"From the whole time I was sick, me trying to hide the feelings and the pain from my sons — it's like 'OK, we came through the fire. Now let's just move on,' " Lassiter said. "There's no need to hold anything back."